


Day 2: Home

by lesblep



Series: Lance Week 2016 [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen, shoves my headcanons at you and leaves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-30
Updated: 2016-12-30
Packaged: 2018-09-13 08:51:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9115831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesblep/pseuds/lesblep
Summary: Blue is the best thing that has ever happened to Lance.





	

Blue is the best thing that has ever happened to Lance.

She's so much more than a machine, which is what he and the other humans thought when they first started their space adventure. She's alive, albeit not in the way you'd expect: she and her sisters don't eat or breathe or sleep, and to be completely honest, if they did, Lance would probably be even more confused as to how they work. He asked Allura once, and the only explanation he got was a bored 'magic', prompting him to have to explain to the Altean that humans don't have magic.

Either way, Blue is the best magic space lion there ever was, despite Keith's constant declarations that the red lion is the best. Sometimes it feels like she's the only one who understands him out here in the depths of space.

She knows what it means to lose a home. She gets it when Lance freaks out when the Galra threaten families. She understands what it feels like to be alone, even when you're surrounded with people who love you.

Lance decides to prove it by spending a night inside her, which is something he's been meaning to do since the Nyma Incident (oh-so-creative name courtesy of Pidge). It doesn't hurt that Lance hasn't been sleeping very well in the castle-ship supplied bunk. Whatever Altean mattresses are made of, it doesn't agree with Lance's back.

"Hey, Blue," he calls out as he steps into the hangar, pillow under one arm and wearing his blanket like a cape over his shoulders. "I'm gonna sleep with you tonight, okay?"

He's greeted with a low, rumbling purr and an open mouth. Lance steps into the darkness, footsteps muted by the customised slippers he found his first day here (his predecessor had style!) and ends up getting smacked in the butt by the ramp when he lingers too long in Blue's throat. "Rude!" He chides his lion, who only trills innocently, sending his mind an image of him laughing. Lance remembers that- Blue must have recorded it when he first discovered her ice powers.

Lance drops his pillow and blanket unceremoniously onto the pilot's chair, plopping himself down on top on the pile of synthetic space fabrics. "Can you get me a little more comfortable? But don't push me too far forward. I'm sleeping, not flying."

Blue makes a questioning noise, and Lance smiles and lets her into his mind. Would you look at that, maybe Allura's constant pushing for them to bond is paying off after all. Blue sends an offer of the chair reclining into a bed-type-thing, and Lance chuckles. "You can do that? Sweet!"

A chirp of agreement, then the chair tilts back until it becomes a bed. A hologram of Earth immediately starts projecting from the dashboard, slowly rotating above him, and Lance's mood changes from perky to contemplative.

"You know me so well already," he tells his lion, voice soft as he wraps his blanket tighter around himself. "You would've loved Earth. You really missed out, being underground- in the desert, no less- for ten thousand years. There were so many cities. They were never quiet, and they were beautiful at night with all the lights..."

Lance reaches for the hologram, watching his fingers pass through it, and sighs. "The ocean was my favourite part about Earth. You've probably seen a lot of super cool space oceans, but Earth's is the best. I grew up beside it, and it was so gorgeous every morning, with sunlight sparkling over it-" he cuts himself off.

"I'm supposed to be strong," he informs his lion. "I'm lucky to be out here, I'm lucky to be amounting to something and to be protecting the universe, but all I can think about is my family." Blue purrs as if to comfort her paladin when he starts to cry, curling her presence around him like a second, more robotic blanket.

"It's so stupid!" Lance cries out, digging the heels of his hands into his eyes. "A defender of justice isn't supposed to want to go home, I have a duty, but God! Sometimes, I just want to go home, and then I realise I can't! Do! That!" He slams his fist against the wall to punctuate the last three words, then immediately regrets it.

"Sorry, Blue. You don't deserve that. You're my best girl out here." Lance tucks his throbbing fist into his lap (despite his best efforts, he isn't invulnerable to bruises, even self-afflicted ones).

Lions can't talk. That's a fact that Lance and the other paladins discovered right away. They communicate with images and cat noises, which are apparently universal. But if that's the case, then why can Lance hear another voice inside his lion? He sits up, slowly, and his jaw drops.

The hologram of Earth has been replaced with a hologram of an unfamiliar Altean woman. Then again, Lance has only ever met two Alteans, but this one is wearing what is unmistakably the armor of the blue paladin, which piques his interest right away.

"Testing," she says again, and Lance is hypnotised by the idea of learning what it was like to be a paladin ten thousand years ago.

"Is it on?" She asks someone off screen, curling a lock of navy blue hair around a finger. The woman pauses, listening to what must've been the lion's sound of affirmation. "Thanks, Blue. You're the best."

"Hi there, future blue paladin!" She waves at the camera, which means she waves at Lance.

"My name is Faeleth. I'm Altean, like you probably are. But! If you're not, that's okay too! I'm twenty years old, and I just left my homeworld. Forever. That kinda sucks. A lot."

"The blue paladin is chosen for their loyalty, and I guess that's cool, but at the moment it feels like a raw deal. Maybe I'm too loyal? Who knows. Either way, I'm probably never going back to Altea. I didn't realise that until I literally walked into the castle ship, said hello to my fellow paladins, and ran into Blue's hangar to record this message."

"I'm recording this because I'm guessing you feel the same way. I have sixteen siblings- yeah, I know, even for an Altean, that's excessive- and I miss them all so much it feels like my vascular muscle's been ripped out. I won't tell you all of their names. That would take forever. But I will tell you that I am a little bit upset with the black paladin at the moment."

"I told him that I was a little homesick already after liftoff, and you know what he said? He said to get over it! I know that Galrans are supposed to be emotionless, but quiznack! That's just ridiculous!"

"Oh, yeah, let me tell you about my team. Yellow, Green, and Blue, (obviously) are piloted by Alteans. Red and Black are piloted by Galrans. I'm not sure why. There was a treaty that talks about it, but who cares? What matters is that the paladin of the red lion is really, really cute. Like, wow."

Lance stifles his laughter, scrubbing his tears away. This sorely reminds him of life back on Earth, when his useless lesbian of a big sister gushed for hours about her crush.

"Galrans aren't usually hot, but for some reason, she has the cutest little ears ever. And you probably know just how important ears are to Alteans. And she's tiny, for a Galra, the perfect size for cuddles! I bet she's a halfa, that would explain a lot-"

Faeleth stops herself halfway through her sentence. "Oh, wait. I just realised that we just met, so I can't hug her yet, and I never learned anyone's name, I was so excited to record this for you."

"Now I have to go back to the bridge and find the others and apologise for running off and then introduce myself. Quiznack! They probably thought that was really rude!" Faeleth facepalms.

"Heh. Back on Altea, people told me that paladin candidates should be seen and not heard, and now look at me! Still talking up a storm and a defender of the universe. Okay, gotta run. To recap, I'm Faeleth of Altea, I'm twenty, I pilot the blue lion, I suck at introductions, and the red paladin is unfairly attractive. Catch ya later!" She salutes the camera, grinning, and flicks it off.

The cockpit goes dark, and Lance flops backwards onto his chair-turned-bed, smiling giddily. "Thanks, Blue." The universe just got a little less daunting, now that he knows his predecessor will be there to show him the way.

**Author's Note:**

> i had to rewrite this little shit three times. THREE!!! you don't know true fear until you realise your work hasn't saved.
> 
> catch me on tumblr @genocidalcatgal


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